THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS OF TEL EL-AMARNA. 25 
fessor Erman has pointed out, Amenophis, the son of Pa-Apis, 
must be Amen-hotep, the son of Hapi, who erected the 
colossus of Memnon at Thebes during the reign of Amen- 
ophis III. . 
So far as the date of the Exodus is concerned, the newly- 
found tablets confirm the conclusions already arrived at 
by Egyptology, and so brilliantly verified by M. Navyille’s 
discovery of the site of Pithom. At the close of the 18th 
Dynasty, Palestine was still Canaanite; the Israelitish inva- 
sion had not as yet taken place, and the only foreign dominion 
acknowledged by its cities was that of Hgypt. Between 
Canaan and Egypt, indeed, there was close and constant 
intercourse. The towns of Palestine were garrisoned by 
Egyptian troops, and, though its governors bore Semitic names, 
they were officials of the Egyptian king. Egyptian influence 
-and supremacy extended through Syria as far as the banks of 
the Euphrates; the Hittite conquests in the north and the 
Israelitish conquests in the south had notas yet driven Egypt 
back into Africa, and separated the eastern and western 
portions of the educated world one from the other. 
How highly educated this old world was we are but just 
beginning to learn. But we have already learnt enough to 
discover how important a bearing it has on the criticism of 
the Old Testament. It has long been tacitly assumed by the 
critical school that writing was not only a rare art in Palestine 
before the age of David, but was practically unknown. Little 
historical credence can be placed, it has been urged, in the 
earlier records of the Hebrew people, because they could not 
have been committed to writing until a period when the 
history of the past had become traditional and mythical. But 
this assumption can no longer be maintained. Long before 
the Exodus, Canaan had its libraries and its scribes, its 
schools and literary men. The annals of the country, it is 
true, were not inscribed in the letters of the Phoenician 
alphabet on perishable papyrus; the writing-material was the 
imperishable clay,—the characters those of the cuneiform 
syllabary. A new light is thus thrown on royal lists like that 
contained in Genesis xxxvi. Why should this not be an 
extract from the chronicles of Edom originally written in the 
cuneiform syllabary of Babylonia? A connexion with 
Babylonia is indicated by the statement that Saul came from 
“Rehoboth ” or “the city-streets by the river” Huphrates, 
more especially when it is remembered that Saul, or Sawul, is 
the Babylonian name of the Sun-god. Though Kirjath- 
Sepher was destroyed by the Israelites, other cities mentioned 
in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, like Gaza, or Gath, or Tyre, 
